ZERO for advertising. Yet...

Hi Steven,

Where do people find out things?

As I go through my email daily, I read through the genuine emails I receive, I delete the spam, and I read some ezines....

Some ezines get their articles from other authors, who write articles specifically for this purpose. They allow anyone to reprint their articles, as long as they include their "resource box" at the end, which of course includes a link back to their web site.

That's one free way you can promote yourself - write articles for ezines!

I've only done this to a small extent, but I know some people have built up big followings this way. As well as putting their articles on web sites, sometimes their articles appear on various web sites and in ebooks too....

You can find a good list of places to send your articles to here....

http://www.sowpub.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl?read=7232

Thanks to Shelley for posting that useful collection of links!

(Read through the whole thread too - you'll see links to other articles in the thread at the end of that post.)

It takes time to write articles, but it is free!

- Dien

You've probably seen various movie stars appearing every night on the different talk shows, such as on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, or the Late Show with David Letterman....

These movie stars usually only go on these shows when they have a new movie coming out. Of course, once they're on the show, they talk about their lives, and naturally they also talk about their new movie. They show a clip, then it's an ad break, and over to the next guest!

What these movie stars are doing is similar to writing free articles for ezines. These movie stars give the talk show something - an interesting and famous guest to talk to, which the audience is interested in. In return, the movie stars get to promote their upcoming new movie, and boost the movie attendances!

When you write an article, it is as if your article is "guest-starring" in someone's ezine. You provide them with something - a great article full of your wit and wisdom. In return, you get to promote your web site to the ezine's readers, and boost your sales!

It's really the same thing, in principle. So if you look down on writing free articles - just think, you're doing essentially same thing the movie stars do. :)

- Dien Rice